Covance, a Princeton, N.J.-based provider of drug development services, has entered into an exclusive alliance and services agreement with M2Gen, a subsidiary of the Moffitt Cancer Center and developer of personalized cancer treatments.

Covance and M2Gen will work together to offer biopharmaceutical clients the ability to match potential patients for biomarker-driven oncology trials with the right treatment or clinical trial. In addition, Covance will become the preferred provider for M2Gen for DNA/RNA sequencing, gene expression analysis and genotyping analysis services, which will be conducted at Covance’s genomics laboratory in Seattle.

M2Gen’s cancer-focused data warehouse, one of the largest of its kind in the world, and related specimen biorepository, links longitudinal clinical, molecular and specimen data from more than 95,000 consented patients from Moffitt Cancer Center and a consortium of 17 hospitals throughout the U.S.  M2Gen uses a proprietary healthcare informatics platform to support a clinical trial matching program, which can significantly reduce the timeline for identifying suitable participants for enrollment in clinical trials and improve the design of biomarker driven trials.

"Working together, Covance and M2Gen expect to help biopharmaceutical companies accelerate their drug development programs, make better decisions, and improve their efforts to develop targeted therapies for cancer patients," said Ken Somberg, MD, chief medical officer and vice president, clinical development services, Covance. "M2Gen’s database is unique in the industry, with clinical data captured and maintained over the cancer patient’s lifetime. This alliance will help us partner with sponsors as the field of personalized medicine continues to evolve, and as we work toward a common goal of bringing new life-saving medicines to patients who need them.”

Covance has conducted more than 130 trials across several tumor types in the past five years on behalf of biopharmaceutical sponsors. The alliance with M2Gen will extend Covance’s personalized medicine strategy and reinforce its drug development capabilities in this key therapeutic area.

M2Gen and Moffitt Cancer Center will continue efforts to add new hospitals to their network, further expanding access to clinical data for thousands of consenting cancer patients across the U.S.